Brazil Announces Exhibition Theme for 2016 Venice Biennale

Responding to curator Alejandro Aravena's theme "Reporting from the front," the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo has selected Washington Fajardo to present an exhibition titled “JUNTOS.” The project for the Brazilian pavilion will highlight stories of people who have fought to achieve changes in institutional passivity in Brazil's big cities. They have created architecture within slow processes, bringing stable solutions in a politically tumultuous territory. According to the curator, “the exhibition is a composition of these pathways and partnerships, where activism meets architects and architecture, becoming a magnet in the preparation of a new space.”

According to Luis Terepins, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Fajardo's project is particularly suited to the general theme of the international event. "By establishing a dialogue between Brazilian architecture and contemporary international discussion, the Biennale aligns with the core mission of spreading the culture of the country in the global context," said Terepins.

Afro-Brazilian culture, historical centers, access to culture through architecture and design--these are the stories of the Brazilian pavilion, in a search for what it means to be together (juntos), highlights Fajardo. The exhibition brings together process and their current states, which can be in designing stage, still-to-be-done, or finished. These are processes that speak of architecture, urban planning, cultural heritage, literature, social activism and technology; as a result, videos, photos, letters, articles, poems, texts, facts, drawings and data are also part of the show, "composing a memorial for these lives intertwined in improving the built environment, in their communities, in search of a way of being and knowing. " To create the exhibition "TOGETHER" (JUNTOS), the Brazilian curator selected the following projects: